Re: [gentoo-user] [Somewhat OT] Laptop battery not showing up in KDE, Smart Battery calibration

[Fatih Tümen]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 22:51, Paul Hartman
<paul.hartman+gentoo@×××××.com<paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@×××××.com>
> wrote:

> On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 at 12:43 AM, Paul Hartman
> <paul.hartman+gentoo@×××××.com <paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@×××××.com>> wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:03 AM, Paul Hartman
> > <paul.hartman+gentoo@×××××.com <paul.hartman%2Bgentoo@×××××.com>> wrote:
> >> On Thu, Nov 11, 2010 at 1:11 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@××××××××.org>
> wrote:
> >>> On Thursday 11 November 2010 18:07:35 Paul Hartman wrote:
> >>>> On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 12:05 PM, J. Roeleveld <joost@××××××××.org>
> wrote:
> >>>> > If the soldering isn't done correctly, the battery-pack can
> literally
> >>>> > explode when put under load.
> >>>>
> >>>> Yeah, I don't think the savings would be big enough to justify the
> risk.
> >>>>
> >>>> I found a replacement battery online for less than USD$30 so I ordered
> >>>> it. Hopefully it fits and holds a charge. :)
> >>>
> >>> Good luck :)
> >>> If laptops would work with the same LIPO-packs that are used for Remote
> >>> Control planes, then it would be cheaper and easier as the chargers
> used for
> >>> those are better then the stuff they stick in laptops.
> >>>
> >>> But that's wishfull thinking
> >>
> >> The replacement battery is good, it fits perfectly and holds over 90%
> >> of maximum rated charge.
> >>
> >> I booted from Sabayon KDE LiveCD and the battery meter works fine in
> >> there, so there must be something wrong in my config. I will dig
> >> deeper to try to identify the differences.
> >>
> >> Thanks for all suggestions. :)
> >
> > After a combination of kernel upgrade, BIOS downgrade (to fix an
> > unrelated bug with resuming from suspend), KDE upgrades, and of course
> > general "messing with stuff", now it is working most of the time. I
> > have an actual battery meter and power management works and I am
> > happy.
> >
> > I sometimes get ACPI/DSDT errors in dmesg from boot time, about
> > infinite loops in 3 places, and when this happens the battery is
> > either "not present" to ACPI or is present but the state never changes
> > (for example remaining capacity at boot time is 2048 and this will
> > remain to be the value even as battery is dying). This properly seems
> > to happen randomly, or maybe affected somehow by dual-booting into MS
> > Windows. I didn't think DSDT/ACPI changes by the OS were persistent?
> > Perhaps it's something to do with warm rebooting vs powering off and
> > back on. I will have to experiment with it some more to see if I can
> > break it :)
> >
> > A long time ago I tried to extract and repair my broken DSDT but it
> > was over my head. I don't understand why it doesn't always work but
> > for now things seem to be functioning properly when ACPI is okay at
> > boot time.
>
> Another follow-up. It seems to work normally until it gets this error,
> at which point batter monitor stops working. Sometimes this error
> happens right away, other times it works for hours and then breaks. I
> guess it's a DSDT problem:
>
> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
> [\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_.SMRD] (Node ffff88007f826320),
> AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
> [\_SB_.BAT1.CHBP] (Node ffff88007f81d0f0), AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
> [\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_.SMSL] (Node ffff88007f826398),
> AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
> ACPI Error (psparse-0537): Method parse/execution failed
> [\_SB_.PCI0.PIB_.EC0_._Q09] (Node ffff88007f826438),
> AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP
>
> Does anyone here know about this kind of thing? I am not really sure
> what it means. I've decompiled my DSDT but really don't know anything
> about how to fix it. Maybe I need to find some ACPI mailing list.
> Thanks.
>
>
Usually a BIOS update will do it or a kernel update. You can also try to
disable acpi and see if you can keep it working.

kernel parameters come to mind are acpi=off and pci=noacpi. The first one
completely disables acpi and the latter AFAIR just disables acpi routing for
pci subsystem. Look at kernel-parameters in linux Doc for more
combinations.

--
   Fatih